Church Trip Builds Bonds

Spiritual Journey Enlightens Youth

Boynton Beach resident John Russell admits he used to act like the typical 15-year-old in church.

"I was messing around. I wouldn't really pay attention in church. I would daydream," he said.

But that was before he returned from a spiritual pilgrimage to Scotland this summer with a dozen young people and six adults from Boynton Beach's St. Joseph Episcopal Church. One student and two of the adults were from Delray Beach.

"It definitely matured me spiritually," Russell said. "Now I feel like I understand it all and I even make up some of the prayers. I actually listen during services."

This is the first year St. Joseph's has added a trip to Scotland to the program for adolescents, called Journey to Adulthood. It's designed to help younger members of the congregation develop a more mature relationship with God and the world around them.

"It's a tool many Christians have used to better understand their relationship with God," said Stephanie Read, 24, a Delray Beach resident and youth director.

The focus was a respite on Iona, a spiritual island dear to many members of the Episcopal faith.

"The Celtics described it as thin places. These are places, a Holy Land where you can feel God's presence because of all the prayers that go on in the spiritual aspect of the place," Read said.

There students took hikes, sang songs, led prayers, meditated and organized services with the help of St. Joseph's pastor, the Rev. Marty Zlatic, who accompanied the group.

"Most of the services we all got together and put them together ourselves," said Amy Erickson, 17, of Boynton Beach. "And it was a lot of fun. We got to work together on them and it was a really good community building experience."

Volunteer Ian Barnes, 32, of Delray Beach, enjoyed watching the students grow, particularly one quiet girl who assumed the responsibility of planning services.

"I saw her tap into a courage she had never demonstrated before," he said.

For some, the benefit of the trip was self-discovery.

"I got to bond with a lot of people," said Boynton Beach resident Erin Eastham, 15. "I got to know people I might have not liked before. But then I had to spend time with them and started to like them."

For others it was a chance, not just to broaden themselves spiritually, but to widen their perspective.

David Delisle, 16, of Boynton Beach, said Scotland's rolling hills are filled with the country's 9 million sheep, in stark contrast to the flat tropics of Florida. Add to that, cars puttering along the left side of the road and a shocking lack of neon.

"I want to say I was going on it as a religious journey, but it was more just to be with a lot of close friends, experience a whole different country, and experience the holy island of Iona," said Jesse Poirier, 18, who lives west of Boynton Beach. "It's incredible when you look out and you don't see a bunch of stores, and the hills, and it's much colder there."

Russell found the trip insightful.

"Like now I can hear the jokes in the sermon," he said. "Before I would sort of wake up and everyone would be laughing around me, and I would be wondering what everyone was laughing at."

Church leaders hope to add another trip in two years and keep the pilgrimage as a core part of the program's curriculum.

"In the program, they talk about how when the youth come back they are not going to know the effect of their experience for a long time, maybe years down the road," Read said. "I won't even know, because they will have gone to college or even further into life.

"That is why we are planning to include this as a permanent part of the Journey to Adulthood curriculum by offering a trip to the younger students every two years."